


Da Capo

by thegildedmagpie



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: (only offscreen though), Canonical Character Death, Cousins, Elves Like Hair, Family Feels, Finrod's Bedroom Eyes, Gen, Gen Work, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Torture, Inappropriate Singing, Language Barrier, Musicians, Terribly Appropriate Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 09:51:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5370875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegildedmagpie/pseuds/thegildedmagpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the Years of the Trees to the Second Age, times that Maglor and Finrod played each other's compositions instead of their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Da Capo

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written as a gift for @ten-thousand-leaves on Tumblr. 
> 
> I cannot fail to credit Sath for a really haunting impression of Beren and Finrod's captivity (http://archiveofourown.org/works/4222914) that had enormous (and probably quite visible!) influence on my portrayal.
> 
> Special thanks to my wife, who actually plays the harp, for helping me not sound too asswitted on the subject.

Finrod is a skilled lyricist, though sometimes he makes up words if he can't find a rhyme. Maglor has always enjoyed the quickness of his couplets. And though Maglor's father (and sometimes even his mother) likes to tell him that his own talents make Finrod's pale in comparison, Maglor is not so sure of this. He may be young to judge – but he knows that Finrod has a true gift for imagery, for naming and describing an emotion and conveying it through the harpstrings. In short, Maglor knows they can learn from each other.

Fingon and Maglor were once much in the habit of coming together to play, teaching each other little melodies upon their harps. When he was old enough, they included their younger cousin in the sessions, and Finrod progressed rapidly in their shared art. But they have such different focuses in their music, and different teachers, that soon it's hard to find the time or the excuse. And then, of course, Fingon is forever off with Maedhros, paying more attention to his archery than his harping these days, and when he and Maglor do steal time for music, they're sometimes more than a little annoyed to see Finrod making a beeline for them to ask what sort of chords they've been favoring of late. The fact that he always listens so intently to their answers hardly helps.

Today, though, Finrod has requested help of Maglor alone, for there is an exhibition of bards' talents which will be held in honor of Irmo in the month of softly frosted winter. Finrod, so lately come to manhood, has only played for this event a few times. The theme is songs of Cuiviénen – a particular specialty of Maglor, whose music holds an ethereal power that conjures images of the awakening stars – and Finrod's composition is not prepared.

Maglor shakes his head at the request, his delicate mouth thinning. Finrod remembers abruptly that the last time he saw Maglor was at that dinner where he apparently asked Turgon one question too many about Ulmo. There was the incident with salad. Is Maglor upset, really? They are both so near adults now; surely he would say so directly.

But Maglor answers him after a moment, “I am not entirely happy with mine either. Play yours for me, and I shall play mine for you, and then we may advise each other.”

Finrod cannot resist a chance to be the first to hear his skilled cousin's composition. Cradling his instrument, he settles down expectantly.

The first strains are magic. Finrod feels his eyes widen and his lips part, his hands going tight on his own harp in wonder. Then Maglor's finely-made features tighten into annoyance again. “This is the bit I can't make work,” he says. “Here, listen to it slowly –”

He picks out the notes. They're jewels scattered over velvet. They're tiny, pearly shells scattered on dark sand, each precious for itself and for its vicinity to its fellows.

“And I am playing exactly the same notes at speed –”

It's only a vaguely awkward glissando.

Finrod cocks his head and rolls the notes over in his head. He tries them himself – “See?” says Maglor – then, morbidly curious, tries them backwards – “You changed some of their places” – forward again – “that was closer” – and then switches one note and his finger position and produces an auditory shimmer.

Maglor leans forward from his seat, still-bony wrists going taut with excitement. “That's it. That's what I wanted. How did you do it?”

It takes several tries (and some curses of increasing severity from both of them) before he can both replicate and explain what he did, and the two young elves stare at their harps with matching expressions of awe, as though the strings themselves are maddening masters giving conflicting orders.

“It still doesn't shift properly into the next movement,” Maglor sighs. “Never mind! Let me hear yours, please!”

Finrod is almost embarrassed to produce his own unfinished efforts. “The introduction is working well,” he says as his fingers fly to bring the melody forth, “but it's this next bit – it's stilted. I should be embarrassed to play this before Grandfather Finwë.”

“Then stop making bedroom eyes at your harp.”

“Shut up, Maglor,” Finrod says with no rancor at all. His wrists turn slightly as he labors over his composition.

“I hear it,” says Maglor thoughtfully, and echoes the awkward part – then tries again and smooths it, again and adds a dynamic contrast where Finrod had gone smoother, again with a low, simple thrum alongside the notes that somehow lends an arc of complexity to the whole.

They stare at each other. “Do different midwives catch a different babe?” Finrod asks. “For our hands seem to make different songs of the same melody.”

“Well,” Maglor says thoughtfully, “no two bards can produce quite the same mood when they go to weave an image in song – and you should know it as well as any, Finrod, for you are a dedicate of Ulmo, and his song you know very well, I think.” He looks up sharply. “One word about what Turgon did in the sea-caves, and I shall tell Fingon.”

“I didn't say anything!” Finrod laughs. “You can't think I was trying to embarrass him. He's just ...”

“Turgon,” Maglor agrees, with a light roll of his vivid eyes. “I do try to fall in between the two of you, as far as acceptable topics for dinnertime – or for a bards' competition,” he adds. “I have to ask: is this a lyrical piece?”

“The lyrics are perfectly appropriate,” Finrod assures him (feeling, in truth, a bit giddily grown-up to be holding this conversation so lightly – their age difference is small, but that of their fathers is not so, and Maglor is often a little too proper with his younger cousins). “My parents are attending to, remember? I shall not shame anyone. You could sing it yourself, bedroom eyes or no, and have no – What?” For Maglor's eyes are suddenly sparkling.

“How would it be,” says Maglor, “since we seem to be better at each other's music, if I played your composition, and you played mine?”

Finrod sits up delighted.

“It's entirely against the rules, of course –”

“That isn't written anywhere,” Finrod corrects him. “Go and look if you like; I did, last year. But our styles are altogether different, Maglor! Someone will notice.”

“I should like to see who knows it first,” Maglor murmurs, a touch wicked.

And so of course, that is exactly what they do.

Irmo and Estë are both in attendance at the exposition of music held in Irmo's honor, with their grandfather Finwë seated at the two quiet Valar's left and their – well, Finrod's – grandmother Indis at their right. Irmo, the lord of rest and peace, takes comfort and pleasure in music as in few other of their arts, and the people of Aman are eager to offer this joy to him as he so kindly offers sleep and dreams to them.

Finrod and Maglor are set to play one after another, and Finrod can't help but watch the high table as he sits to his harp and opens the song, his hands flying over that sequence of notes that gave Maglor such trouble and bringing out the delicate fullness of all they convey. Though it pours from Finrod's hands and throat, it's utterly Maglor's. From the strength of the underlying tempo, which holds the power of the forge in its depths, to the affecting soar of the melody with its slow-building, unexpected moments of crescendo like the slow force of a well-wielded chisel, yielding suddenly to a poignant softness, molding the emotions of the listeners like smooth earth – the images wrought by this music are driven and glorious, and Finrod is afloat on the power of what he has offered to Irmo when he brings the song to a close.  
Maglor follows him, and Finrod is delighted to hear what his own style sounds like – accomplished by a master within the magnificent acoustics of this silk-hushed feasting hall. Birdsong becomes light becomes sound again in the riddle of the music. The double entrendres and complex synecdoches of the lyrics – including a little innuendo or two, nothing that Finarfin can't overlook – are beautifully savored by Maglor's rich, lingering voice. And the moments where light, airy notes develop an unlooked-for theme, as mighty as the lordly beams of the hall where the grain of wood yields to a lofty, massive structure – Maglor brings out the potential of every one.

To Finrod's undying delight, it's Finwë who first looks confused, then tries to hide a spreading, disbelieving smile.

As the final notes of the song fade, just before the applause begins, their grandfather finally cracks. The sound of his laughter – as rich as Maglor's music, as joyous as Finrod's – splits the hush, and then others who have sufficient understanding of music to have wondered about the sudden change join in, looking between the black-haired cousin and the golden one with obvious mirth. The merriment swells as experts explain the joke to their neighbors, a better applause than any formal accolades they might have earned. Even Estë is wearing a small smile.

Their grandfather descends from the dais in his ceremonial robes and embraces them both, pulling both their heads against his shoulders. Then, chuckling, he holds them at arm's length, looking at Maglor's shamefaced grin and Finrod's merry one.

“Well done, my grandsons. But next year,” he says, his voice ringing out as the hall begins to quiet again, “by my royal decree, _just play a duet_.”

 

-

 

Maglor composes his first funeral dirge entirely in his head, and days later, he plays it for an audience of the wind alone.

Celegorm has stormed off into the wild rain to kill something. Caranthir stared at Maglor in apparent silent disgust, then turned and swept out. Curufin snarled and spat at Maglor's feet, then followed Celegorm.

“I'm not losing any more of you,” Maglor quietly repeated, now speaking only to Amras. “I will not believe that Father's oath required us to sacrifice each other for the jewels, and if we go after Maedhros, that is what I will be doing. I will not trade the rest of you.” And Amras burst into tears and fled.

Maglor sits with his instrument barely sheltered, sits in the midst of a storm, a king unwanted and uncrowned, and plays.

The funeral song he made for his father yields to the companions he's been humming intensely in his head so that it drowned and resurrected and refocused his pain. A song of fire for Amrod. A song of emptiness for Maedhros.

He's weeping freely now, but he doesn't stop. He segues into songs altogether inappropriate. Songs of Fingon's. Songs of Finrod's. Songs of his own.

His voice he reserves now for the commands of his unwanted kingship. He plays snatches of childhood nursery rhymes. He plays songs he wrote in praise of his mother's and father's abiding passion and songs he made to comfort them in their separation. He plays silly, showy melodies that Fingon played at Maedhros' window to make him laugh. He plays complicated, pretty trinkets of song that were wrought to test student harpers in Aman. He plays melodies he taught Finrod as a golden-haired, knee-high elfling and hunt-songs he made for a small, silver-bright Celegorm and complicated lullabyes he strummed for Amrod, then swathed in the cradle-clothes, now claimed by the fire. 

With tear-stained cheeks and raw fingers, he plays defiance into the screaming wind.

In the years that follow, Maglor will find his powers as a musician ever increasing. The weight of responsibility for a kingship that should never have come to him, and then the duty to obey a brother who was brave enough to refuse it and burns like a flame with frightening rages and wild hope, seem to awaken something that hovers between his hands and his harp. As a composer, he is unparallelled now; some say no bard will ever be his equal.

But there are a few songs of Aman he never gives up playing.

 

-

 

The creatures are strange – passing strange! – bearded like dwarves, but tall like the Firstborn, and Finrod finds them unambiguously delightful as soon as he realizes they're not hostile.

He can't get any words across to them, though. In fact, if he thought they were speaking any language he knows, he'd be slightly offended at what they're saying – but they regard him with a certain degree of awe, so he's fairly sure they're not actually requesting a striptease. (He's not sure this would be a problem for him, actually – these odd people are so unfailingly admiring and polite that he's already growing fond of them as a group – but he doesn't think it would be a successful diplomatic overture.)

Pointing at things and naming them falls flat; with unfailing hospitality, they keep handing him things he gestures toward. His own belongings, when he tries to return the offer, are politely inspected and then offered back. Someone examines his hair with particular wonder; it's an intimate gesture by his standards, but he lets the woman finger the braid, and she turns her head obligingly when he examines hers in turn. (Their hair feels different – coarser, he thinks – and he resists the urge to unpick the braid to see if he can tell why.) He thinks he can see a young one, surely little more than an infant of six, but its mother is holding it back; a pity, as he might have more luck with nonverbal communication with a smaller child.

At last he reaches for his harp. There's a little alarm in the people surrounding him – are they expecting him to attack? “I don't bite,” he assures them, amusing only himself – then murmurs of wonder when the beautiful instrument is brought forth.

One of Maglor's compositions seems appropriate here – his cousin's gift for evoking emotion with or without words will be his friend here. The cries of wonder that arise tell him he was right.

Finrod loses himself in the music for a while, his hands flying, the strings alive beneath them. There is nothing in the world, he thinks, like the thrum of a harp – unless it were the pull of the secret tide when a wave retreats back to sea.

When at last he raises his head again, he smiles, then attempts to evoke polite gratitude in a few notes. The strange people smile encouragingly at him.

 _Now_ they're getting somewhere.

 

-

 

When he dwells in the Gap, Maglor's favorite time to play his harp is in the morning.

Unlike his elder brother, Maglor sometimes takes time away from staring with a white-hot gaze to the northern threat. He'll take any correspondence into the courtyard with him, to have an excuse, and sometimes a cup of tea. His private courtyard is one of the places where he built around the trees that were already there; having seen the ice-blasted cold of Himring, he didn't have the heart to chop many of them down when he sited his own home. One wall is living rock – a perfect balance to the warmer tones that the wood of his rambling walls echoes back to him – and he'll sit and alternate between listening to the birds announce their awakenings and replying with morning songs of his own.

With his hands warmed and limber – he's never neglected them – he'll sit composing. He knows that soon there will need to be songs of war again, and he will rouse their strange collection of troops to battle with his voice, his words, his hands, his strings.

These days the knowledge of his duty does not let him give much time to the making of love-songs, and he's taken for himself the role of keeping his brothers on their toes but not quite at each other's throats, letting them exhaust their energies in conflict without killing each other or wreaking irreparable destruction before they have another chance to claim the stones. It's not a duty that calls much for melodies that stir joy or grant peace. (Besides, when he tries, a melody that stirs a new image or emotion is as painful as once his mourning for his father was – songs of peace were something he made with inspiration from Estë, and while she sends to him sometimes a dream of rest, he cannot quite give himself up to those dreams when the need to answer his father's final command still beats in his blood.)

Sometimes he must have respite from battle-tunes, though, and then he plays ancient songs of worship and discovery and naming. Songs he learned from Daeron feel apt in the rambling halls of his house, and those he learned from Finrod seem the proper answer to the birds.

Other bards reach to touch his heart when he sits there, a warrior-poet who won't give up on a life that holds more than the sword – or on music that isn't made for it.

 

-

 

Gorthaur the Cruel earns his appellation with Finrod, first by direct application of force that leaves him shaking and screaming but without a visible flaw in his skin, then by sending him unmarked back to the dungeon, where no weal or fang-mark tells its story of suffering. He cannot speak of what has happened to him, cannot give warning or seek comfort among those who only wait to be ended by the wolves' jaws; for it is Gorthaur's purpose that Beren's companions distrust their elven guide before they die. Isolation and pain breed suspicion without wont or control, and when Finrod comes back from the wicked amusements of his captors unmarked, he cannot express his agony without making his eleven (ten, nine, eight …) companions wonder foul things in the dark.

It's a fresh and terrible cruelty for someone who has always used his voice and his fingers to make himself known. His harp, that fine instrument he's borne through over so many hundreds of leagues, was shattered into pieces before his eyes after he failed to overthrow Sauron by his art; and with no words to say, with no message to give, his voice is denied to him too.

But when there are few of them left and despair has shuttered everyone's ears from anything but the memory of their companions' dying screams, Finrod presses his brow to Beren's shoulder and breathes in his scent, the true notes beneath the clammy stench of unwashed terror – not quite like Bëor's whom he loved, but still warm and woolly and hinting at safety. Softly, Finrod begins to sing to Beren.

It's one of Maglor's songs, and like Maglor's best work, it sounds simple at first until you hear the complex second and third rhyme schemes and underlying leitmotifs of mood, winding like knotwork through the strength of an easy-to-learn basic verse. It's a charming tale about the meetings of lovers who awakened at Cuiviénen together and found each other fair, about the homes they wrought together and how they chose the names of their children and how their children befriended one another. It connects to nothing and names no one recorded by the histories; it stands for itself.

Finrod had thought this song forgotten, buried beneath the memories of blood in the surf that had brought him to his knees before the throne, but it comes back to him effortlessly as he sings, and while his broken voice will never carry its old power again, he holds the tune true. He changes the names of one of the couples to Beren and Luthien, and calls their neighbor Felagund – it almost scans, or near enough – and lets them learn to herd wolves instead of learn to keep bees, and softly he clinks his manacles to provide a subtle percussion as he sings breathily into Beren's bruised arm.

 

-

 

Maglor has just buried an old man who was laid in his arms on the day of his birth. For three hundred years he's been with the same humble fishing family. He's helped with repairs to the thatching and aided in the salting of the catch, softly played old lullabies over the rocking of the crude but time-worn family cradle, put small hands to the strings of his own magnificent harp. And for the last thirty years he's been with the family's last surviving son, sleeping beside him when the nights are too cold to lie separately, welcoming him home from hard days on the rough seas with a hot meal and a song. For nine generations, through hardship and prosperity and hardship again, the same family has called him “uncle.” When Numenorean subjects hostile to elves came by unexpectedly, Maglor would pull down his hair to hide his ears, and whichever man was the family's patriarch would insist that the tall, pale soul who dwelt in the household was a late wife's younger brother – no one of consequence.

This is the second family Maglor has seen all the way to its end – not counting his own.

Maglor dug the grave deep and piled the cairn high beside the other family mounds. He looked for a long moment over the graves of a dozen people he'd once rocked to sleep. Then he extinguished the coals in the hearth, gathered a few clothes and necessities to refill the pack he'd stowed in a cupboard three hundred years ago, wrapped the season's cured fish to divide between pack and pantry, and closed the cottage door behind him. He did not lock it.

That was many leagues ago, and he's stopped only once to sit at the high tide line and weep. 

He forgoes sleep, as he often does when he's restless or grieving – so often indeed. He walks north for days, pursued by the summer, the days lengthening around him. He's stopped at last and is half-drowsing against a tree when the children find him.

He has walked out the territory covered by a dialect and the children – four stout, similar-looking, black-eyed mortal children, a girl and two boys and one indeterminately pudgy – do not understand his first greeting. Were they adults, he'd keep trying, but since they are so small, Maglor reaches slowly for his harp, lets a friendly smile show through his grief, and begins to play for them.

Only half-conscious of the irony, his hands fall into an old pattern – it's the song of his that, tales say, Finrod played when he first met the Edain, to show them that he meant no harm. In the many years between, he's heard it played by other harpers, and the song has developed a little trill or two that's definitely in Finrod's mode. Maglor replicates this instinctively, finger-pads that are glassy-smooth with scar tissue from the times he had to play them down to the bone still sure enough to create the birdlike sounds – and it wins a smile and a giggle from the children. He plays peace and friendship at them, and sees them soften to the song.

It's not until he brings the melody to a needlessly flourishing close that the eldest child opens his mouth – and in a voice high and clear, he begins singing back to Maglor. The language isn't altogether familiar, but Maglor picks out two words in three. Even in translation, they're not the lyrics Maglor originally put to this melody, but the child's confident grasp of the tune makes it clear that he's chosen to welcome this odd elven stranger with someone else's lyrics for the same song.


End file.
